The unorthodox featherweight based himself in Reykjavik, Iceland
for a month and trained at Gunnar
Nelson’s gym Mjolnir. He found the Scandinavian island a
beneficial place to train.

“The air is fresh, you're training surrounded by beautiful
mountains, all this scenery, phenomenal food,” McGregor told
Sherdog.com. “And it’s a great place to go and prepare for a fight.
There's no distractions whatsoever.”

Life has changed considerably for McGregor since he became a face
in the UFC. The media in his Irish homeland has embraced him, and
so have his countrymen. He’s gone from being a top talent
appreciated by the cognoscenti to having a mainstream presence in
the national media.

When he walks around Dublin now, McGregor can expect to find
himself accosted every few minutes by fans who want to take a
picture, get an autograph or just have a bit of a chat. McGregor, a
born star if ever there was one, has embraced his new role fully,
but he also knows that he needs space to focus and do his work.

Halli Nelson, father of Gunnar
Nelson, has known McGregor since the Irishman was a youth. He’s
seen how life has changed for McGregor since he stepped up onto the
UFC platform. He’s seen a similar thing happen for his son in
Reykjavik, though he notes that the Icelandic fans are less
excitable than their Irish counterparts.

“Dublin is crazy for Conor. And even though he likes it like that,
he also realizes that he needs a little bit of time off and to be
inside the training camp away from the publicity and all the phone
calls,” says the elder Nelson. “And it’s necessary for Gunni to do
the same thing by coming to Dublin for the last period of his
training camp. That was very good for him, though it isn’t the same
craziness for Gunnar in Iceland as what it is for Conor in
Ireland.

There is a stark contrast between the level of fanfare in Ireland
and Iceland, although Halli says things are beginning to change in
his home country.

“You know the Irish, they are a little bit crazy, “he said. “No, I
don’t know, it might be a cultural thing, maybe the Icelanders
don’t get as emotional as the Irish do. If you look at the
atmosphere around this UFC in Dublin, tickets selling out in
minutes, it’s more intense here.

“In Iceland we had famous actors who for years could walk down the
street without being hassled for pictures or autographs. Now it is
changing a bit, especially with [the onset] of mobile phones with
cameras and people wanting pictures with famous guys, but certainly
it is nothing like here [in Ireland] or the United States.”

McGregor and Nelson have trained together for years, a result of
the close relationship between SBG Ireland’s coach John
Kavanagh and the Mjolnir Gym in Iceland. It takes only a
cursory glance at the two to see how opposite they are in
temperament. McGregor’s excitability contrasts with Nelson’s
unflappable cool; they are fire and ice.

“Conor isn’t putting on an act, this is how he is. He was always
like this, intense. Like at the weigh-ins he would be up in the
face, and when he would talk to you everything was full-force. He
has always been like that,” Halli said with a laugh. “Gunnar has
always been the other side of the spectrum, calm and cool. And that
is not an act either, that is how it is. And then you get those two
guys in the gym, and they just click. They learn so much from each
other, and they take so much from each other.”

Despite the differences in personality, McGregor and Nelson seem to
mesh well.

“They are good friends. They maybe don’t hang out too much together
outside the gym. They have different personalities, but you don’t
have to have the same personalities to have a friendship going on.
Especially with a training partner,” Halli said.

“It always seems strange to me when people ask how Conor and Gunnar
can be friends when they have such different personalities,” he
continued. “I say well, look at your friends: Do you all have the
same personality? Of course not.”

This weekend is Nelson’s second fight of 2014. In March he
submitted Omari
Akhmedov by way of first-round guillotine to extend his UFC
winning run to three, with two of those victories being inside the
distance.

Prior to March, Nelson hadn’t fought since February 2013, the
result of a knee injury which had required surgery. Any doubts
about ring rust being a factor were addressed with the March win,
and the elder Nelson says Saturday’s fight will be equally
unaffected by cobwebs.

“Gunnar has said it before and I can only repeat it: He doesn’t
believe in ring rust. He thinks it is more in the mind than
anywhere else. You train in a gym every day and you spar every day.
Competition is different from that but every competition is
different anyway,” he said. “So I agree with Gunnar. Ring rust is
something you put in your mind; you shouldn’t dwell on it. [If
you’ve been in this game] a while, you know what’s going to happen
[in a fight]. Or actually, you know that you don’t know what’s
going to happen in a fight.”